Big Brother Shirt!

For my nephew's 3rd birthday, I made him a big brother t-shirt. He became a big brother back in August and I was looking for one around Christmas but just couldn't find one I liked.

So I did what any Crafty person would have done... I made one!

For Christmas this year, I got a Silhouette Cameo machine from my parents. Before this I had a Cricut Die-cut machine, which I loved. However, the Silhouette can do quite a bit more! I'm honestly a bit overwhelmed at all it can do!

With my machine, I also got a Heat Transfer Starter Kit - I was excited at the possibilities, but intimidated about how to get started. So I procrastinated and watched a LOT of YouTube videos. Finally I was inspired and felt that I could tackle this project!

I found this file on the Silhouette Online Store that I really liked. I read the instruction book that came with the starter kit a few times to make sure I wasn't going to miss any details and jumped in.

I cut out my file on paper first so that I could make sure I liked how it came out, and to make sure it would fit on a 3T t-shirt! (I laid my cutting mat over it to measure)

The instructions say that you can cut the vinyl with out a cutting mat, but I couldn't get my vinyl to feed into my machine so I opted for a mat. When you go to cut your pieces, the cut screen asks if you are using a mat, so I just selected that I was and all was fine.

(* Note: when using Heat Transfer - remember to MIRROR YOUR PROJECT IF IT HAS WORDS!! Thankfully I remembered this before cutting on my vinyl, but I can see myself making that mistake a few times before it truly sinks in!)

I laid all of my pieces out together to make sure everything was sized right and I liked how it looked. (also sent many texts to a few friends to see if they agreed that it looked as good as I thought it did!)

Next I laid it all out on the shirt to get the position right and make sure I liked the spacing once.

Finally I got out the iron, set it to the cotton setting and dove in. I actually had to move off the ironing board and to an ironing mat (a few towels would also work) on the floor because I couldn't put enough pressure on it with it up on the ironing board. Ironing each piece on took longer than the directions stated. I had to press on each piece for a total of 2 minutes before I could cleanly peel the backing away. (my iron has a 30 second safety setting so I would have to tip it back up for a few seconds and then press again)

I'm really happy with how it turned out. It's adorable and I can't wait to see him in it!

Next Heat Transfer project:
The Little Brother match to it!